I have a placein myheart for alternative sources of TV or movie entertainment. However, long before this current environment was what it is, there was the BBC. Even before the time of cable TV, we here in America looked to BBC-created productions as an option, whether more intellectual or just a different brand of funny, to what we got here at home. These days, I don’t know how productions get funded under their auspicious, but it seems to be a variation on that national-government-supported production theme that has producedforeigntitleswe’vepreviouslyenjoyed. Still today, the BBC output trends toward a cultural or educational merit that the open market may sometimes neglect.

My first impression was that it was made for a particularly British (or maybe Scottish) audience. The opening scenes consisted of a year and a date and then a few quick lines of dialog, followed by a hard cut to the next scene. I felt as though I should have known what the date/city combinations meant, had only studied harder in school. I was beginning to wonder how much more of it I could take when the show settled into a more comfortable pacing.

Episode 1 begins with the death of Mary of Guise, Queen Consort to James V of Scotland and mother and Regent for Mary, Queen of Scots (aka Mary Stuart, Mary I of Scotland). It also begins with a twisting of historical facts to support the simplified version of history used to build Gunpowder, Treason & Plot. The implication from the show is that Mary of Guise was actually Scotland’s queen and had spirited her daughter and heir away to France in order to protect her from political dangers while a mere princess. Neglected is that fact that Mary Stuart already was Queen of Scotland from her father’s death, only six days after her birth. Also ignored is that fact that Mary was, at the time of her mother’s death, Queen consort of France.

The first episode spans the seven years until Mary’s capture after the Battle of Carberry Hill. The series rephrases the events of that time in terms of Mary attempting to solidify the claim of her line to the English throne and Elizabeth I attempting to foil that effort. More specifically, the fight for control over the succession of the English throne is portrayed as one of sexual politics. Although her marriage to Francis II of France is ignored, her marriage to the soon-to-be-murdered cousin Henry Stuart, subsequent marriage to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell are central to the show, events which did, indeed, cause Mary’s downfall.

As the relationship between Bothwell and Mary began its development, I started to think that this was lifted from Game of Thrones. Specifically, the story seemed to be following fairly faithfully the non-love affair between Ser Jorah Mormont and the Dragon Queen. This is aided by a not-so-passing resemblance between Clémence Poésy (15 years ago*) and Emilia Clarke. Problem with this theory is that Gunpowder, Treason & Plot preceded Game of Thrones by seven years. Now, I wouldn’t discount the possibility that George R. R. Martin based his fiction, in part, on this historical episode. It’s even possible that the Martin’s books influenced the on-screen portray in Gunpowder, Treason & Plot, the book being out four years before the show.

Conveniently, the book Moment of Battle which provides a relevant overview to the strange religious bedfellows of this time. Mary I (of England, this time), a devout catholic, had taken the English throne upon the death of her (Protestant) half-brother. As part of her efforts to return England to the Roman Catholic Church, she married the soon-to-be-King Philip II of Spain. After Mary’s death, Philip began to consider an invasion of England to depose Elizabeth I, again a Protestant. England had become both a commercial as well as military rival of Spain, the latter primarily through piracy. In addition, Philip saw himself as the defender of the Catholic faith and ridding England of Protestantism would be seen as a righteous crusade, particularly after England had joined with the Netherlands in a protestant alliance and armed rebellion against Spain. After Mary Stuart’s imprisonment, she became a focus for Catholic rebellions in England. The idea was that freeing her and replacing Elizabeth with Mary on the throne would restore Catholic rule while not upsetting the succession apple cart. While it would seem natural for Philip to back this plot, there was a problem. Mary’s family, the Guise, were also maneuvering for the throne of France. Philip was concerned that backing Mary Stuart in England would only strengthen the power of the French throne, who remained his main rival for power in continental Europe.

Back to Gunpowder, Treason & Plot, the second episode begins with the betrothal of James VI of Scotland to Anne of Denmark, anachronistically interposed with James visiting his mother just prior to her execution. It also introduces having characters narrate the story, which has just picked up again more than 20 years later, by turning and speaking directly into the camera and to the TV audience. This begins with James VI himself and would have been considerably less jarring if it hadn’t been introduced as a narrative technique halfway through the course of the film.

Like the first episode, history has been recharacterized as sexual in its nature. James is a thoroughly unpleasant man and a homosexual. This combination directly leads to the Gunpowder Plot, after mixing with a desire for higher tax revenues. He is portrayed as having a severe physical deformity, a la Shakespeare’s Richard III, such that his inner ugliness is foretold by his physical ugliness. While James had severe health problems late in his life, I am unable to find consistent information about any significant physical issues at the time of his coronation. I have found a modern analysis that suggests a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome. Of note in terms of today’s politics, this one of the few diseases to which it is still politically correct (in some circles) to affix with stigma.

Last, I’ll comment on the lack of favors that Netflix did in how it listed this work. The preview image for the show is taken from the second episode. It shows a scene where the three main plotters (Guy Fawkes, Thomas Percy, and Thomas Wintour) are in their undershirts preparing to test the efficacy of their gunpowder. Wintour wears a red felt hat that doesn’t look too out of place on the characters when fully dressed but sits oddly on a man lying in the grass in his underwear. In this context, it looks like a setup for some slapstick comedy. Because this was what I saw every time I scrolled by the listing on Netflix, I always decided that this night would not be a good night to watch it. Until it expired, of course.

Ignoring for the moment the departures from historical fact, the show is mildly entertaining. It’s a made-for-TV BBC production, which give some implication as to its quality, both pro and con. The shift in focus from the national and religious to the person and, well, sexual helps to limit the scope to something that can be portrayed on the small screen. While sometimes I feel that all of the outdoor scenes were shot in the same 1 1/2 acres in Romania**, it mostly does a reasonable job within its limits.

Perhaps this is more interesting as a preview of what was to come. As I’ve said before, Game of Thrones indicated that there was an appetite for historical fiction on the television. The Tudors has run concurrently with Game of Thrones, dramatizing many of the same characters albeit in the previous generation. Reign focused on Mary, Queen of Scots, but more on her time in France. Seasons 3 and 4 cover the same timeline as that of episode 1 of Gunpowder, Treason & Plot. Just to make clear the nexus with Game of Thrones, 2017 saw the TV series Gunpowder released, with Kit Harrington in the producer’s seat as well as staring, in this case, as his own ancestor, Robert Catesby. While I know nothing about Gunpowder, I suspect that the anachronisms in the first two will make Gunpowder, Treason & Plot look like a documentary.

*Oddly enough, the two actresses are only, themselves, four years apart in age. Poésy was 22 when she played the, initially, 18-year-old Queen (aging to 24 over the course of the show). Clarke was 25 when she first appeared as the 13-year-old heir to the Iron Throne.

**One particularly strange choice is that all the scenes showing horseback riders traveling across country has them make a 90-degree turn when they reach the middle of the shot. It was odd even the first time I saw it. Why did they half to turn? Then I noticed that they did it in shot after shot.

It’s been about a year since I was watching the Showtime version of The Borgias. That show remains available on Netflix streaming to this day but I watched it when I did because of its topicality and because it seemed like the most acclaimed of the several television treatments of the Borgia family story. I had every intention of eventually watching another series, created for European cable/satellite TV, Borgia.

There are plenty of opinions out there on the internet that actual hold Borgia, not The Borgias, as the better of the two series. They were created and aired nearly simultaneously and so comparison is invited at every turn.

Netflix has now forced me to take on Borgia immediately, as the series will not last the month with them. Like the Showtime version, this series ran for 3 seasons, so I fear I will be hard-pressed to complete my viewing in time.

But we do what we can.

Like the Showtime version, we are treated to nipples in the opening credit sequence, giving us a promise of the sexual content to come. Unlike Showtime, that sexual content is not presented to us as the opening scene in the show and, also unlike Showtime, we’re not immediately dealing with hints of incest. Borgia, being a European production, should come with different expectations when it comes to sexuality. It is at the same time both more explicit and less salacious, if that makes sense.

I was also struck early on by the actors ages, and commented on the choice in The Borgias to have a 23-year-old actress play the 11-year-old Lucrezia Borgia. With Borgia also using Lucrezia’s entry into womanhood as an anchor for the opening of the narrative, I note that the use of an 18-year-old actress (and a young-looking one at that) is a significant production change.

Of the two, Showtime clearly worked with the bigger budget. They used more well-known (by Hollywood’s measure, at least) acting talent and their costume and sets are far more elaborate. Outdoor scenes in Borgia seem tight and narrow, probably as a result of fitting them onto a small set with a limited number of extras. Indoor scenes do better, but none have that stunning beauty that shown forth from the occasional Showtime set.

That said, my gut says that this version put more effort into historical accuracy. The scenery is shabbier, yes, but is often portraying poverty and disease. Costumes have less style but (particularly the religious vestments) seem to display a little more variety. Without knowing the details, I get the impression that the different “uniforms” have legitimately different purposes. Likewise the music, which in the Showtime version I heard the occasional anachronism, seems to be correctly matched to the period, especially when the instruments are being played or the singing being done on the screen (as opposed, that is, to background music).

The narrative itself follows a slightly different path. Historicity, in this regard, can be difficult to judge, perhaps more so if, like me, these dramatizations are your first exposure to many of the details of Rome at the end of the fifteenth century. The Borgias featured a cynical Cesare who, from the beginning, commanded the screen and was already working towards seizing power. Particularly when compared to his brother Juan, he clearly was the true heir to Rodrigo. In Borgia, by contrast, Cesare starts as pious and even superstitious, displaying weaknesses and errors that seem to keep him from fulfilling his desires.

This is an intriguing change. From the beginning of The Borgias, it is clear from Cesare’s screen presence (including the look of the actor as well as the focus on his character) that he is going to be the protagonist. Even if we don’t approve of his methods, we know that this going to be the person we should care about. In Borgia, Cesare is difficult to like from the start. In some ways, he seems to be a little more focused than brother Juan, but he is also prone to his own monumental acts of stupidity. Unlike Juan, he tends to fret endlessly over his blunders, reducing his sympathy. I expect it to make for a deeper story moving forward.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

I had this moment of disorientation when watching the conclave in Borgia. This episode is from 2011, but it seems to be speaking very specifically to current events. It probably didn’t help that someone had just sent me an article from 1990 talking about the methodology of defamation as a political attack. Pointedly, the article explains that the practice of “ritual defamation” is universal;

It is not specific to any value, opinion or belief or to any group or subculture. It may be used for or against any political, ethnic, national or religious group. It may, for example, by anti-Semites against Jews, or by Jews against anti-Semites; by rightists against leftists or by leftists against rightists, and so on.

The story of the election of Rodrigo Borgia to become Pope Alexander VI will often dwell, with good reason, on the politics of Rome at the time. As Borgia explains in its introduction, the “crown” of the papacy was more than just the mitre of a high priest. The Pope ruled, as a monarch, over the Papal States, which was a major player among the competing kingdoms if Italy. Add to that the sway that the head of the Catholic Church could wield over all Christians (monarchs and other men of influence), and you are talking about one of the premier secular positions of power in the world of 1492.

The Pope is supposed to be chosen through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That is, he is assumed to be divinely selected. However, given the political importance of the position, we know that politics comes into play. Major factionalizations include both the Italy-versus-the-rest-of-the-world faction as well as factions comprised of competing kingdoms within Italy. Within that context the voting cardinals tended to be, themselves, from powerful families and thus voted with the interests and biases of their own bloodlines.

The Borgias focused on outright bribes and Cesare’s role in distributing them. The Borgias also went from the death of Innocent VIII to the coronation of Alexander in one episode. By way of contrast, Borgia takes two episodes for Innocent to pass on and two more episodes to elect the new pope. Also, while a passing mention is made of the bribes that have been distributed, the focus is on the bargaining within the conclave itself. In particular, all sides use defamation to attempt to keep votes away from their opponents.

As described in the article, the veracity of the accusations are often irrelevant. As pointed out recently in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings, these political arenas are not courts of law. The point of making heated charges is simply to produce enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt to keep a candidate from getting enough votes for a victory. Uncannily, for his opponents’ most effective attack upon him, Rodrigo Borgia stands accused of attending an orgy as a young man. He is also accused of having Jewish blood. As described in the linked article, however, his real crime is that of being an outsider. As a Catalan, he does not belong among the Italian elite. That he dares to aspire to its heights is sufficient to justify whatever charge is lain upon him.

I’ve watched Troy before. Many times. I saw it for the first time through a rather freak invitation to the U.S. premier. To relive my night amongst the stars, I picked up the DVD.

Now, Troy is being removed from Netflix, so I’ll watch it again before it goes. It’s late, I’m tired, and I’m in the mood for something I don’t have to pay much attention to.

Troy is not a great movie, but it is better than the criticism would imply. The movie takes its story from the Illiad, but fairly loosely. One negative review I read complained about the absence of the gods from the movie which, I suppose, they considered the key element of the story.

Instead, Troy is a particular genre of historical fiction that imagines a fictional story as if it were true. One can’t possibly swallow the narrative of the Illiad whole, but if the epic is based on historical fact, what might those historical facts have looked like?

Given that as a goal, the movie is almost absurdly anachronistic, featuring weapons and armor nearly a thousand years offset from the likely timeframe of the Trojan War. The drawings of the Trojan War, created during the Greek Classical Period, reflect the reality of the time in which the artists lived, not lifetimes of the subjects. The mindset of mankind 3000 years ago did not much consider the advance of technology, and therefore people generally imagined the people of hundreds of years earlier existing much as they, themselves would live. The same can likely be said of 1000 years ago (or less). So using the Greek’s own art to portray “realism” in the illustrated story is, right away, going to cause some problems.

In spite of this, the film offered to me some enlightening images of what might have happened in a real-life Trojan War that could eventually be remembered as the what happens in the Iliad. To put it more accurately, what if modern minds were put into 7th-century BC Greek arms and armor and sent to re-fight a, perhaps mythical, 13th century battle. Even still, film weaves this modernized portrayal of a “realistic” Troy with allusions to the mythological aspects of Homer’s version as well as portions of Homer’s dialog.

I am reminded of Michael Crichton’s book Timeline. In that novel (also a movie, although we don’t like to think about that), modern university students are transported back in time to the Hundred Years War. One of the those students, who is a modern expert in Medieval weaponry, is shocked by the style of fighting he sees. From today’s perspective, we imagine knights in plate armor stumbling around under the weight of all that steel, clumsily bashing at each other with swords. In reality, these combatants must have spent their entire lives perfecting the ability to move and fight. Our fictional observer inherently knew, but was still surprised, to see the speed and skill of the medieval warrior.

This was my first impression when I watched Troy. In the poems, Achilles and Hector and the like are portrayed as magical in their ability to fight and slay their enemies. In reality, they were just people. But to be a person whose fighting abilities would be remembered some 3000 years on, one imagines that such skill would have been honed to the point of artistry. While we imagine someone living 3000 years ago as unsophisticated, they were almost certainly at least as skilled at navigating their world as we are with our own.

It is probably best not to dwell too deeply on the details, but at least at a superficial viewing, the combination of Pitt’s performance and whoever did his stunts for him suggests a level of skill and athleticism that, while hardly other-worldly, certainly might have been perceived as such by those who found themselves at the pointy end of Achilles’ spear.

A contrasting portrayal is found in the fight between Paris and Menelaus. Paris is characterized as a novice to warfare – a lover not a fighter. When he challenges the Greek king to single combat, he is clearly outmatched. This is shown by camera work which depicts Paris’ point of view. He sees the fight through the eye holes of his (anachronistic) helmet, and the viewer is impressed with the lack of awareness that an unskilled soldier might have felt in such armor. Paris sees the confident and capable movements of Menelaus, and we are reminded of the difference in skill levels between one of Homer’s “heroes” and what we ourselves might be capable of under the same conditions.

I read (or maybe watched) somewhere that part of how the director (Wolfgang Petersen) prepared the actors, particularly for their final face-off, was to push the two leads to be competitive in everything. As Pitt and Bana prepared for and rehearsed their roles, they were challenged to outdo one another. The end result was not just to get them looking the part but to intensify the conflict between them because they were genuinely (if only figuratively) at each other’s throats.

While the film did have its pluses, it also had its pitfalls. The acting was one-dimensional, with an always-stoic Brad Pitt clenching his jaw at a perpetually forlorn Eric Bana. The script was a bit flat as well, with an over-emphasis on simple themes – the primary one being the trade-off between a happy life and eternal glory, taken from the Iliad itself. This too may justify some of the awkwardness of the dialog attributable less to the skills of the scriptwriters and more to the difficulty of taking Homer’s almost alien prose and human interaction, and mixing it in with the contemporary language and themes that are also in the film.

While I actually favored the version of the story where the gods are portrayed as a superstitious belief rather than actual, physical representations in the battle, other deviations from the original story make less sense. The entirety of the Iliad takes place at the end of a ten-year siege of Troy. In the movie, starting as it does with the abduction (?) of Helen, needs to smoothly transition between the start of the invasion and the end of the war. It does so by making it all take place within a few days – the Greeks land on the beach on day one and fight the Trojans in open battle before the walls (where the Iliad opens) on the following morning. While a few more days pass before they slip into the city within the Trojan Horse, the entire decade long wars seems to have been condensed into little more than a week.

The time distortion causes other problems. For example, Achilles is shown in the movie ready to fight and die over Briseis after she is taken from him by Agamemnon. We later see that he is considering giving up the war with Troy, and eternal glory, to return to Greece and make Briseis his wife. This is all taken, after being jumbled around a little bit, from the Iliad. But in the Iliad, Achilles has been living with Briseis for years, and the relationship has had time to develop since he killed her husband and made her his captive. In the movie? Achilles goes from oblivious to obsession in a matter of a few hours. Portrayals of love in ancient texts are often quite detached from reality but, at least in this case, the Iliad seems to make a lot more sense than this modern film version.

Petersen’s work runs that gamut of quality from good (The Perfect Storm) to great (Das Boot) to mediocre (Poseidon). But he has a string of box offices successes that entitle him to make big budget movies, but focusing on not-your-typical big-budget subjects. While you and I may have made Troy differently, it took Wolfgang Petersen and his standing within Hollywood to get it made. I also have to thank him for his indirect role in getting me that premier ticket.

Sometime it can be illuminating watching the ads for a program and extrapolating from them to who the marketers think I, the viewer, actually am. For example, when I have a doctor’s appointment, my doctor’s waiting room runs continuous daytime TV. I notice all the ads are for the treatment of various illnesses and injuries as well as the lawyers who will help you seek compensation for such. This even when the content seems targeted to a different audience. Of course, who is home watching daytime TV in the mid-afternoon? The elderly, the chronically ill, the seriously injured, plus the occasional home-sick-in-front-of-the-TV outlier.

Likewise, when renting a movie on DVD, many contain trailers. Sometimes I know I’ve made the wrong choice in film selection when I’m treated to a series of trailers for movies I know I would never watch. The Dark Tower springs to mind. (If you haven’t seen it, don’t bother).

I’ve just started in with the TV series Manhattan. This is a piece of “original programming” created by what was first a Chicago broadcast station (channel 9) and then became one of the early cable TV “superstations” (a local channel shown nationally via cable. Think also Turner’s TBS) called WGN America. Another example of their original program is the reimagining of the Salem witch trials in the TV series Salem.

The previews at the beginning of the DVD inexplicably starts with an advertisement for Manhattan itself. The second ad is general branding for the production company, and the third for that same company’s DVD packaging of Mad Men. The next ad was for a History Channel miniseries called Sons of Liberty. This was a rather unpleasant production that revolved around a spiced up version of the interpersonal drama of the American Revolution. It portrayed the founding fathers in contemporary cool, engaging in Assassin’s Creed style rooftop leaping. I tried to enjoy it, but couldn’t make it past the first of three installments.

The common theme here might have had me worried, if I wasn’t already sold on the series by my reading before I rented. Manhattan received high praise from the critics and is ranked highly (for me at least) on what remains of Netfix’s ranking system. Extracting a common theme from the previews, these are all period-dramas and fairly stylized ones at that. Criticism of Salem suggests that the drama is fully intended to overshadow the history.

So, too, with my initial impressions of Manhattan. The actors are mostly twenty-teen looking, rather than 1943. The dialog is obviously written with the modern world in mind. In a particularly glaring anachronisms, scientists wonder about the post-war world where The Soviet Union, China and “the Shah of Iran” become nuclear powers.

Similarly, the words and phrases simply seem out of place with the times, with half-a-dozen per episode that are probably (although I can’t know for sure) too new for use during the Second World War. It’s a artistic decision that I can actually accept. The choice comes down to whether your dialog sounds jarringly out of place to the modern ear or, sounding more natural, doesn’t really match the period. The decision to modernize is easier to swallow when you’re modern British-English is standing in for Renaissance Italian. It takes some patience when it is the dialect of our grandfathers.

Likewise the topics, ranging from the ineptitude of government bureaucracy to exploring bi-sexuality and drugs are clearly talking about today and not the issues of 1944. I’m far more interested in the technical plot line, pitting the Thin Man and Fat Man design teams against each other. Thin Man has the political backing to have all the resources where as Fat Man is pushed by a skeleton team driven by a brilliant but out-of-favor scientist. Given the rest of the show, I don’t imagine there is much “reality” in the dramatization of the physics, but it is why I continue watching the show.

The historically-based drama is, admittedly, created within the context of the Manhattan project, but not actually trying to follow actual historical events or individuals. One rare exception is the inclusion of Robert Oppenheimer, with the actor uncannily resembling the real man. When I saw him first on the screen I actually thought the portrayal was way over the top. Having looked at more pictures of him and read about his personality, I’m no longer quite so sure. We also have a brief appearance by Niels Bohr, who very much resembles the actor who played him in The Heavy Water War. The rest of the characters are largely created out of whole cloth.

The show has met with critical acclaim. While I would not call the show bad, the flaws in its presentation of history prevent me from labeling it “great.” It is interesting that the actual award won by the show is for the main title design. It is quite a main title, mixing engineering sketches, physics drawings, and illustrations of family life.

Praise for the show seems to be focused on the technical details, like acting and set design, and ignores the technical details, the physics. One internet review refers to it as a Mad Men set at Los Alamos. I suppose that is the way to watch it. We never worried, while enjoying Mad Men that there really never was a historical counterpart to the ad agency Stirling and Cooper. So should we ignore that Frank Winter, Charlie Isaacs, and that fat guy who snorted up the plutonium simply never existed.

In 1995, the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart was released to theaters. Famous as Mad Max and bankable as Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon series, Gibson was by then established as an A-List celebrity. Despite his status, Gibson found it nearly-impossible to raise money for his new film.

Gibson did not want to play the main role of William Wallace, as he felt he was too old (then 50-year-old Gibson portrayed what is likely a 30-year-old Wallace). Gibson was eying then 40-year-old Jason Patric in the part he ended up taking, but no studio could see backing the project without Gibson’s name as the lead actor.

The film was criticized when it came out for its violence (Gibson cut scenes to avoid an NC-17 rating and the ultimate R rating came with a warning for “brutal medieval warfare”) and subsequently for lack of historical fidelity. Yet another round of criticism came into play accusing the film of being provocatively anti-English. Despite offending almost everybody, the film has become the iconic image of William Wallace and has been a measurable inspiration to the modern Scottish independence movement.

Gibson has defended the glaring historical inaccuracies by saying that his duty was to make an entertaining film, not document history. The film’s writer, Randall Wallace (no relation), said that he wrote the script before doing any historical research specifically because he didn’t want the details of history to interfere with the telling of his story. He has gone on to say, because so little factual information from the actual battles are preserved, that while his version of William Wallace’s life is obviously made up, so is any other telling of his life’s story. We just don’t know, so why not make it entertaining?

While I’ve defended the mangling of history in pursuit of story, it a fair accusation that this film takes it too far. The battle of Stirling Bridge (which CNN, in a 2007 best-of list, included as one of the top ten battles of cinema), most notably, lacks a bridge. Apparently, Gibson was asked during filming why he shot the Battle of Stirling Bridge in a big open field and responded that the bridge got in the way of the battle. “That’s what the British found” was the comeback. While only #9 on the best battles list, The Times ranked Braveheart as #2 on their list of the most inaccurate historical movies of all time.

While I am in no position to measure such things, Braveheart seems like it was one of those movies that infused the culture and grew in influence as the years went by. It was certainly fairly popular in theaters when released and went on to be within the top 20 grossing films of 1995. But as the years went by, one saw bits and pieces of the movie becoming more-and-more part of the popular culture. Not to analyze it too deeply, but I’d say peek William Wallace was probably several years after the film came out. Furthermore, a character in a kilt with woad-warrior paint on half of his face (both glaring anachronisms from the film) is, to this day, clearly identifiable as being Wallace.

As I’ve said, I don’t want to try to map William Wallace enthusiasm in pop culture, but I will point out that just days ago, as sequel to Braveheart called Robert the Brucewas announced to being production. I note it is being floated as a sequel to Braveheart, not simply a historical drama about Robert I of Scotland (about whom, incidentally, the term “braveheart,” was likely originally intended).

A Dug’s Age

This brings me to 1999 and the release of The Age of Kings. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings was a sequel to Age of Empires which brought that semi-historical strategy game into the era of medieval warfare. When I looked at the game before, it was in the context of the early 15th century. While the expansion for Age of Kings clearly was created for including New World exploration, the time period and technology were pushing the limits (such as they were) of what the game reasonably simulated. With the First War of Scottish Independence, we are firmly back in the 13th Century, to which Age of Kings is (such as it is) well suited.

Given Braveheart‘s popularity, it surprises me that there weren’t more games at that time trying to capitalize on the popularity of the movie. William Wallace via Age of Kings was my first shot at gaming the movie. Are there other games that I’ve never tried that cover this ground? Perhaps. But I’d be surprised to find games that predate Age of Kings. I’m also surprised that there haven’t been more and better games since then. Am I simply missing some games that attempted to explore this territory? That I don’t know. But I do recall being pleased with the inclusion of Wallace when I first installed my Age of Kings way back when.

I had forgotten it was the “Learning Campaign.” Hopefully nobody is trying to learn Scottish geography. That map is way off.

The William Wallace campaign is the one included as a tutorial. Back when I originally played this, Age of Kings was entirely new to me (I had only ever played the demo version of Age of Empires) and it was also the first time I’d ever seen Wallace represented in a game. I did not remember the silliness involved.

As you might derive from the above screenshot, or remember if you also played this game, the campaign starts out in the usual way of Age of Empires tutorials. You have a scenario or two that involves you following a well-marked path, engaging some enemies in fairly isolated and one-sided battles, and building a few buildings. This path leads you to the two historical battles presented, #5 The Battle of Stirling [Bridge] and #7 The Battle of Falkirk.

The Battle at Stirling Bridge… or something. I guess it is not that much further off than the battle depicted in Braveheart.

The story up until Stirling Bridge merely presents Wallace as some other entity, fighting the English for Scottish freedom. The player is cast as some nameless Scottish Chief, ready to join in the fight. At Stirling, we are told we will join with the army of Wallace.

But we don’t meet Wallace and we don’t engage in the Battle at Stirling Bridge. Instead, the tutorial is about locating and destroying the enemy headquarters, which is the normal way of winning any Age of Empires game. The scenario end matter goes on to say that, having completed this tutorial, you are now prepared to embark on any of the random scenarios. As a nod to the ahistorical nature of the outcome, you are described as having engaged in some sort of side action. By taking an English strongpoint, you helped facilitate Wallace’s historical win at Stirling Bridge.

Fair enough.

Finding the English running short of supplies deep in Scottish territory, we’ve decided to… build a new castle.

After one more tutorial about working with allies, we engage in the final scenario, The Battle of Falkirk. This was pivotal point in William Wallace’s story. He has, thus far, defeated and humiliated the English, been proclaimed the Guardian of Scotland, and seems poised to gain Scottish independence. At Falkirk, though, he faces Edward himself (a veteran commander of the crusades) and the English first string, if you will. Braveheart (the movie) tells his defeat as a story of betrayal, but the reality is that the Scots were simply out-maneuvered and out-fought. Will Age of Kings attempt to follow a historical telling of the battle or depict it as Gibson did in the movie?

I know, silly question.

The Falkirk scenario is a fairly easy win, provided you follow through with the instructions. At then end, the victory panels describe how we (the Scots) have torn down the English castle at Falkirk and intend to build a Scottish one in it’s place.

In the context of writing this, it is almost painful to think about.

U Can’t Touch This

A few years later, in 2002, perhaps the best game treatment to date came out. It was not a computer game.

I am thinking of the Columbia Game’s Hammer of the Scots. Hammer is one of Columbia’s “Block Games,” a style that uses wooden blocks with stickers to implement a combination of hidden movement and step reduction. Unlike cardboard counters, the wooden blocks can be set on end so that the face with the unit information is hidden from your player opponent. Similarly, the block can be rotated, to show up to four different strengths (also hidden from the opponent) as opposed to the two that might be indicated by flipping over a counter as a measure of reduced strength.

Hammer of the Scots was not the first block game. That distinction would seem to go to Quebec 1759, released in 1972. Hammer is cited by Wikipedia as being “among the best-known” block games, without attribution for that analysis. Assuming it is accurate, this is also likely due to Gibson’s influence as much as anything.

The start of the Braveheart scenario from the viewpoint of England.

Hammer of the Scots concentrates the play at the operational/strategic level. Each block represents the forces raised from a county or a clan. In the case of the Scottish nobility, that force is represented as a “noble” block. In most cases, these blocks can switch between the English and Scottish sides, representing the nobles propensity to switch their allegiance between an independent Scottish ruler and Edward’s claim to the throne. Other blocks represent the county or clan contributions as either horse, archer, or infantry. Each noble in the game has a home county (or two), and either loss of that home county to an enemy occupier, loss of the noble block in battle, or political action (via card) will cause the noble to switch sides. In this way, the blocks are doing a double duty as both military and political representations.

A glance at the map and the representative units obviously indicate a level of abstraction. Not all counties or nobles are represented, and what is there is fairly one-dimensional. For example, an English army might enter battle consisting entirely of Welsh long-bowmen. That seems unlikely. If you compare the map board, you can see that while simplified, it remains slightly more detailed than Crusader King’s map of Scotland from the same time.

The initial setup as an overview. Compare and contrast with the Crusader Kings II map.

The Crusader Kings depiction of Scotland is slightly less detailed than that of Hammer of the Scots.

Battles are also fairly simple, but in an engaging way. Blocks have three different ratings when it comes to battle. They have an initiative, which will determine the order they get to exert damage. They also have a numerical combat rating, which determines essentially their “to hit” percentage. It is the fraction out of six that an attack to will do damage to the enemy. There is also the aforementioned strength, which represents a combination of manpower, supplies, and readiness. Each strength point is worth one die to be rolled on the attack, and reducing strength to zero removes the block from the fight. Battles are fairly straightforward, but a little deeper than the single roll on a combat table. It also is more engaging as far as the theme goes. A powerful block – be it William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, or King Edward I – becomes a key determinant in the outcome of the battle. “Yes, I am losing,” I may think “but William Wallace is up next to roll, and he may turn the battle around.”

Early movement in the war for Scotland sees the Scottish clans forcing the nobles into the independence movement.

All in all, it is a nice representation of the Scottish War of Independence and a decent game to boot. But the biggest reason this game stands out for me is the treatment of winters.

Many games (and perhaps even computer games particularly) factor in weather these days. At the strategic/operational level, campaigning during the winter months entails penalties. Perhaps it is a loss of supplies, or may it involves an attrition applied to armies in addition to, or even when not engaged in, battle. No doubt there is a disincentive to moving and fighting in the wrong season, but rarely is it decisive. Honestly, I find these factors hard to keep track of and I would get pretty upset if an army just vanished because it got too late in the year.

In fact, fighting (and especially pre-Napoleonic fighting) had to ebb and flow with the change of the seasons. Weather aside, when raising an army from the productive males of the population, it was often necessary to conclude the fighting in time for them to return home for the harvest. Certainly keeping your army fed over the winter months must have often been second best to just letting everyone go home, and come back in the spring. Not every campaign or theater had these concerns in the same way and modeling it needs different approaches given time and place.

Hammer of the Scots keeps track of the years by assigning a hand of cards for each calendar year. Once all five cards are played, a winter phase is entered where units either have to find sufficient winter quarters or they must be disbanded. The year’s campaigning can also end early if both sides play an “event” card, meaning careful planning for the winter can be foiled by the unexpected. A key strategy, as mentioned in the rule book, centers around the fact that England can’t normally move armies far enough North in a single year to take all of Scotland. Thus a plan to extend an invasion though the winter is a necessary factor. Incidentally, the King of England block (a key factor in increasing the strength of the wintering army) cannot spend two consecutive winters in Scotland. It is a great way to acknowledge the overarching impact of the seasons on the war while minimizing the record keeping and the unit losses to bad bookkeeping. While it is realistic to consider that managing supplies and logistics might be the critical factor in winning a war, it doesn’t usually make for fun gaming.

The Battle of Stirling Bridge produced the historical outcome. While the Scots continue to consolidate in the North, Edward is moving his army for a replay of Falkirk. The outcome, perhaps inevitably, will be similar.

The main feature of a block game like Hammer of the Scots would seem to be, at least at first glance, the Stratego-like ability to hide your units from your opponent. It may be surprising to consider that this was not the original intention of the design. The designer said his original design was to have six steps, essentially using 6-sided dice for the blocks. The cost of producing such a six sided piece, however, turned out to be prohibitive. A co-designer came up with the idea to only print one side, which still leaves four steps. The change not only brought costs under control*, but introduced the fog of war concept. With that feature, the ability for players to deceive opponents as to the location of their strongest armies would seem to be a major factor in play. For a high-level player, the ability to remember the results of battles and extrapolate those to the possible future states would seem to be an advantage.

Strip that away, and I still think there a worthwhile approximation of the history in there. I’ve talked before about converting a board game to the computer can make it seem far simpler than the board game version was. Strip away the (rather elegant) representation of battle strength, and how much do you think is left? So, for example, imagine that the three level combat rating was a hidden resolution performed by the computer. How big a part of the game is working those details? Either way, I still giving this one the gold star for its treatment of winter.

Grooving with a Pict

I was a fairly early adopter of the Total War series. I picked up Shogun: Total War (released in 2000) and was immediately enthralled by its mixing of the strategic and tactical into one, unified game. It also seemed to be a fairly realistic portrayal, given the parameters. Yes, the strategic/operation layer consisted of moving something like chess pieces on what was portrayed as a table-top map, but this could simply be interpreted as that “general simulator” I’ve talked about earlier. Did Sengoku-era generals move representations of their armies around on a giant table map? Maybe not, but it still feels natural.

Likewise the tactical part of the game. While it probably wasn’t really all that “realistic,” even by the standards of the time, it was a huge step up relative to much of the RTS genre. The results took into account factors such as unit facing, cover (such as woods), and height. It’s all the same factors we’d find if we were looking at a highly-detailed tactical system in the miniatures or the board game world. It also helped that it was a relatively lesser-known subject for a wargame. Because few gamers know too much about Feudal Japan, there was less of a expectation out there that could be disappointed.

Of course, that works both ways. As someone who really hasn’t given much thought to the history of that time and place, it was difficult to connect to Shogun. So when the Medieval: Total War follow-on was released (2002), I became even more enthralled.

When it first came out, the game immediately offended some of those in the large and growing player community. The accusation was that the developers had realized their bread was buttered more by the real-time strategy community, and the head-to-head online players at that, than by the serious wargamers. The feeling was that they had somehow dumbed down the game to appeal to the click-and-twitch crowd.

While their was something to the criticism, part of me also wonders if there wasn’t a nostalgia factor involved. As the game became more complex in the newer iteration, issues not so obvious with the older game maybe just became more so. Was the AI really worse in the newer version, or was the game just harder to play (both for the human and the AI).

Mitigating all of this was the fact that Medieval: Total War was very modable. It wasn’t much more than few months before user-made mods were available that fixed some of the “realism” problems. The primary focus was on increasing the rate and effects of fatigue and, more generally, slowing movement so that battles were not just a 3-minute clicking race. The openness extended to scenario files, where they were stored in a plain-text, structured (XML-like) format. I seem to remember an extensive amount of user-made mods for historical battles. I also seem to remember that the stock package had a Stirling Bridge scenario and perhaps a Falkirk as well.

In 2004, Rome: Total War was released, changing the face of the Total War franchise. The big change was the move away from the “chess pieces on a map” strategic interface to a map where armies can move to almost any location in the world. The regions still existed, but only for the purpose of control, no longer as “spaces” on a map board. Armies in the same region could move to engage, or avoid each other, or just coexist in two different places within the same region. Further, the location on the strategic level would determine the terrain for tactical level battles.

Rome also made obvious, by contrast, another feature of the Medieval: Total War system. When creating a historical battle in Rome, it is clear that you had to abstract the unit sizes so that each Rome soldier was representative of dozens or maybe even hundreds of men. The size of the armies in the great battles of the Roman Republic and Empire simply exceeded the capacity of the game system, in a number of ways. While Rome awed users with the number of soldiers animated in real-time 3D on the screen as an impressive cinematic feat, getting, for example, 130-140,000 soldiers to fight an historical Battle of Cannae was simply beyond the capabilities. Even if you assumed a reduced ratio, the number of units cap is also exceeded by these large battles.

While the period covered by Medieval: Total War also had large battles, easily exceeding the capacity of the engine, the game did seem to be capable of simulating the smaller unit action that were likely common during, for example, the Hundred Years War, on a one-to-one ratio between rendered soldiers and actual men on the field. I even took a look at using the openness of scenario editing to refine this further. For example, fielding units with a number of soldiers matching some sort of roster, or even creating “hero” units, that consist of a single man with custom stats.

When Medieval II: Total War came out at the end 2006, it was certainly highly anticipated. The graphical capabilities of Rome simply blew the original Medieval right out of the water. Furthermore, the Rome expansion Barbarian Invasion brought Rome awfully close to entering the Medieval era. As a matter of fact, mods for Rome covered a huge range of time periods, including the Medieval time-frame and beyond.

The release of Medieval II once again met with complaints from the “realism” crowd. Once again, the emphasis on graphics and head-to-head online play seemed to detract from the ability of the system to actual simulate period battles. After all the effort that modders had put into tweaking the Medieval game to achieve realistic results, here came a version that went in entirely the opposite direction. Furthermore, the system was considerable more closed. While graphical modding was still in an open and openly encouraged system, the grognard level of the game was more closed. Very upsetting to me personally, the scenario files were no longer text based, but required editing in a supplied scenario editor that, frankly, I’ve just never been able to get the hang of.

After some time figuring out the capabilities and limitations of Medieval II, there were many online extolling the virtues of the original Medieval as a tool for replaying historical battles. At that time I even got so frustrated as to reinstall the original Medieval and play it to see if it was really the superior system we all remembered. It did not stick. As I suspected with the nostalgia around Shogun, I think part of the fond remembrance of the original Medieval is misplaced. Again the simpler system probably made the AI seem better, and just memories being the way they are, the older system is remembered as better than it actually was. I returned to the Medieval II installation and eventually many extensive mods came out that contributed to the game’s ability to better recreate history.

One thing that did not seem to come from the community is a range of historical battle mods that accompanied the earlier games. The Historical Battles section of the menu is also remarkably underpopulated. The focus has obviously shifted to include that integrated strategic/tactical engine, although randomly-generated “quick battles” remain an option.

Back to the subject at hand, this version of Total War seemed to be ready to give William Wallace his due with the release of the Kingdoms expansion. That expansion focused on three new campaigns; one for the Teutonic Order and north-eastern Europe; one for the European conquest of the New World; and a Britannia campaign. The last restricted the map to the British Isles and pits five nations against each other; the English, the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and Norway starting in the year 1258.

That’s not Mel, is it? This looks like a promise of a focus on the War of Scottish Independence.

Much like the main release, the expansion does not have much in the way of historical stand-alone scenarios. Playing as the Scots, there is a choice of a couple of pre-made scenarios that are more of an enhanced random map than any kind of historic battle reconstruction. Similarly, and despite the prominence of a William Wallace in most every introduction screen, the 1258 start means that the details of the Scottish War of Independence are not configured into the campaign. In order to get to 1296+, it is necessary to play through the decades that precede it.

Initially, there is a hopeful sign. The starting year puts us right at the beginning of the Second Baron’s War. A few years after I started playing Scotland, an event split the English nation into two factions, one for the king and one for “the Barons.” Also, immediately, the Welsh sided with the Barons in that conflict. Perhaps the event triggers in the game would drive us towards the various important conflicts of this era? Unfortunately, the Medieval II: Total War engine isn’t really suited towards the political subtleties. Even by the 1314 or so, the Barons retain some territory and continue to duke it out with generations of English monarchs, despite the utter impossibility of such a scenario. The Second Baron’s War was never about splitting up England. It was a fight for political control that moved to the battlefield. The Baron’s War event is probably somewhat useful to an English player, who will be highly motivated to take out that extra “nation.” Within the context of a Scottish campaign, it becomes a distraction.

Likewise the open-ended nature of the campaign produced another distraction. While the real Scottish War of Independence saw Norway allied with Scotland against England, in my game the Norwegians decided to try to grab some territory from me. What ensued was a decades long war between Norway and Scotland, with some minor participation from Ireland and Wales. The war with England (perhaps because of their own endless Baron’s War) never broke out.

Within this context, William Wallace still rose up with an army of highlanders prepared to protect Scotland from the Viking hordes. But he co-existed with not only the Scottish King Alexander III (who, in this reality, apparently survived the fall from his horse) but Alexander’s son, who showed himself to be a great field commander. Absent the context of Scotland’s struggle for independence, one wonders what the point of including William Wallace even is. Still, here he be, and just in time too.

Spears twice as long as a man. Young Prince Alexander see’s his army crumbling, but Wallace’s highlanders are about to save his hide.

The critical series of battles for Scotland’s survival indeed took place in the 1290s. The Norsemen swarmed across the northern borders and had me well outnumbered, threatening several cities simultaneously. Scottish finances prevented the raising of armies to counter them, so it was only the arrival of William Wallace and his highland army that saved the Kingdom (or at least the northern part of it). The battle above shows an engagement where Prince Alexander has attacked the marauding Norwegian army, which was considerably larger in number. He did so, however, knowing that Wallace and his troops would arrive in time to reinforce the fight. As you can see, my (Alexander’s) army has crumbled, but Wallace’s forces are coming up the hill to hit the Norwegians in the flank.

So in the end, the campaign really doesn’t entail that much in the way of immersion. The battle shown above was the first in a series whereby I seized the initiative and recaptured all my lost territory and then some. Having weakened them, my fight against the Norse has settled down. I wound up spending most of the early 1300s growing the size of my towns, building castle walls, and trying to make money in the wool trade. In other words, the shape of the map aside, it isn’t that much different than any other Total War campaign. OK, I’ve got a couple of special Scottish units (that wheel of red arrows on green in the schiltron formation) and my leaders have Scottish accents. Well, most of them. There seem to be a few Russian accents thrown in for good measure.

So Medieval II shows us some pretty pictures, but just doesn’t align real well with the Scottish war. Even the pretty pictures probably owe more to Gibson’s Braveheart than a serious portrayal of that war. Did you really expect that much fromTotal War though? I didn’t think so.

Take ’em to the Bridge

Field of Glory (2009) has the distinction (among the games I’ve played here**) in that there is actually a bridge in the Battle of Stirling Bridge scenario. It is a user-made scenario, and it is a “land bridge.”

The scenario maker here wanted to capture the desperate struggle of the English to get their armies across the River Forth using a bridge that was wide enough for only two knights to cross abreast. The Scottish commanders waited until enough of the English were across that they could still outnumber them, and then commenced the attack. They were able to isolate a portion of the English army on the north side of the river, cut off reinforcements by blocking the bridge crossing, and cut down the trapped portion of the army. Likely as much as half the army was destroyed while the other half watched helplessly from the opposite shore of the river.

The tactics of this battle take a back seat to the pre-battle maneuver, where this engagement was truly lost. The English lost several days, dithering on their side of the river, a mistake which may have squandered their first-to-the-field advantage. They also had an opportunity to cross upstream at a ford and perhaps prevent their army from being trapped, but this stratagem was rejected by the English commander. It seems like the battle was lost through decisions made well before the fighting even started.

Of course, the English didn’t feel they needed these advantages. They knew they outnumbered the Scots and figured they had them well outclassed. English and Welsh longbowmen along with English Knights faced a force they considered to be mere rabble. One wonders, also, if they may have expected the Scots to follow good manners and wait until the battle lines could be fully formed before engaging in a one-sided battle.

In any case, Field of Glory does not support a river crossed by a wooden bridge. So the scenario added a few hexes of land and made it rough terrain to simulate the difficult in moving soldiers rapidly across. Given the difficult predicament in which the English find themselves at the start, I figured I had better take their side to have a shot at approaching the historical results.

Betraying my heritage, I decided to play as the English. Given the scenario setup, this seems the only way to get a fair game.

Onceagain, we see the perils of pushing Field of Glory outside of its comfort zone. Besides the aesthetics of having a wooden bridge represented by a lump of marsh, the battle did not approximate reality in a number of ways. I quickly moved my forces to try to break up the Scottish attack. This had an unexpected effect of having retreating forces battling fleeing back across the bridge while my reinforcements were attempting to cross forward. The result was a further slowing down of my crossing and the disruption of my formations before they could enter into battle.

It was also clear that the AI just didn’t understand the terrain. No attempt was made to duplicate the historical move of surrounding and cutting off the forward English. Rather, the Scots began lining up along the river to the South of the bridge, apparently flummoxed by the impassible river terrain and the “land bridge.” In the end, the scenario timed out before the forces could engage enough to produce a decisive outcome. Given the difficulty in moving forces across the river, it is hard to see how the English can win within the timeframe.

The answer might be within the scenario text suggesting an alternate victory condition. It suggests that the Scots can win if no non-routed English remain on the north side of the river. This duplicates the historical win, and would cause a human Scottish player to likely follow the historical strategy. It may even be that if the Scots attempt such a strategy and fail, the losses would drive the outcome to an English victory. Or, perhaps, in a two player game with this alternate victory condition, one might agree that the draw should go to the English as a win.

Only a few miles away from the Stirling Bridge battlefield, the Battle of Falkirk has the advantage (for Field of Glory) of not featuring a bridge.

I will fight the English in detail. I advance my armies on my right to try to disrupt the English knights as they cross wet ground. It almost looks like the strategy will fail when some enthusiastic Englishmen charge my lines.

The terrain is probably looks a little less contrived than the marshy land-bridge of the previous scenario. I’m pretty sure the large pond in the middle wasn’t really there. Rather, it is Field of Glory‘s best representation of impassible terrain. If you can figure out how to see the screenshots at a larger size, you might pick out the overall battlefield in the mini-map. If so, you’ll see that the “pond” breaks the battlefield into two wings. On my left, King Edward I leads his men forward. On my right, I’m facing a lesser number consisting of almost all horse, and realize they are going to separate themselves off from the rest of the army once they cross the burn (stream) and put the pond on their flank. I also notice that AI Edward’s men are a bit timid when it comes to crossing that marshy terrain.

As shown in the screenshot, I therefore move my schiltrons forward to meet the English as they drag themselves out of the muck. Better still, my John Comyn and his cavalry do not flee the field. Rather, I am swinging them around to my far right flank to support the infantry. In all of this my hope is that by holding back on my left, I can engage and perhaps run off the English on my own right flank, and then turn that back in toward my left for support.

Edward, with the Green flag in the center, has led his wing forward and broken up all of my left but for a core around Wallace himself. But here comes the cavalry.

The next screenshot shows my strategy working. While my left wing has taken a beating, Wallace and some followers have held together long enough for half of my right-wing infantry come into play. My horse is also more or less intact and is once again supporting my flanks. Victory is in sight.

The AI has held the Welsh in reserve, even as they begin to lose the battle.

In a rather strange AI behavior, captured above, the Welsh have failed to move forward in support of the English knights. Strange because it seems that even when the AI isn’t aggressive, it at least likes to shuffle units around just because it can. Watching them hold formation, as they are, except for the occasional loss of cohesion when a routing unit charges through their lines – well, I think it is a first.

One might muse that an alternate Falkirk where Comyn stayed the course, but the Welsh refused to die for Edward was not entirely outside the realm of plausibility. But did it mean victory for my digital Wallace?

It did not. While I moved forward and was actually able to either kill or capture the King himself (again, Field of Glory doesn’t model that detail), the heavy losses on both sides and the scenario turn limit ended the game in a draw. I was a couple of points up on the AI and I think I could have put them over the edge with one more turn, but it wasn’t a blow out.

Although to a lesser extent, I think again this pushes the battle beyond the comfort zone of the programed opponent. The obstacles in the center of the battlefield seemed to prevent the AI from coordinating its attack. And while I can imagine a historical explanation for the lack of participation by the Welsh, there was no in-game announcement of some sort of event indicating they were frozen.

Kings, Dukes, and Earls

Every so often, one of these wars just seems like it would fit perfectly into Crusader Kings that it surprises me to not find a scenario for it.

I know I’ve complained about this a couple times before. I realize, however, that I forgot about one of the features of Crusader Kings. The game has several scenario starting dates, with particular countries recommended fitting the them of the scenario. There are also “bookmarked” dates; dates of particular interest, again with the relevant countries highlighted. But in addition to start from one of the pre-packaged dates, it is possible to select any date and any country and start playing from wherever and whenever you’d like.

One can scroll through the years preceding the events of the Scottish Independence War and select Scotland under various rulers according to the disputed succession. King Alexander III is replaced with Margaret, Maid of Norway. Upon her death, John Balliol rules for a few years before being followed by Robert the Bruce. The problem is, nowhere built into the system, are the events that would trigger the involvement of King Edward I and England in the fight over the Scottish throne.

I played starting at the date of the Hammer of the Scots scenario, which already sees Robert I as king. Further, he is king over a united and peaceful Scotland not at all in conflict with England. I tried starting a little early, as Robert the Bruce with John Balliol as king. Once again, the involvement of England is absent, and Balliol decides to commit Scotland to the ongoing Crusade in the Holy Land. While waiting to see if any sucession crisis developed, Edward I died with Balliol still firmly in power in Scotland leaving a underage Edward II in charge of England and unlikely to embark on any kind of expansion.

So while I was mistaken in my earlier assumption that the historical figures weren’t available for arbitrary starting situations in Crusader Kings, that still leaves quite a gap relative to what is needed for a scenario. The triggers necessary for Edward I to press claims on Scotland need to be included in addition to having all the appropriate Scottish claimants ready and willing to go to war. I’m also not sure the diplomatic system could handle the switching-of-sides needed to properly convey the politics of the situation. Finally, and this is what the on-line discussion of such a scenario focuses on, the involvement of Wallace doesn’t really fit into the Crusader Kings model. One obviously can’t play as Wallace, as he was not an earl (the minimum rank for a player). While an army and commander could be created for him, it would probably take some tweaking of events to produce suitable gameplay.

Flowers of the Forest

Perhaps the best historical fiction writer in the market today is Bernard Cornwell. His novels delve into the day-to-day routine of the period in which his stories take place, with a result than sometimes makes them seem more real than actual history. Cornwell has yet to write any novels based in the War of Scottish Independence. He did, however, write a four book series (although I think I’ve read only three of them) taking place in the Hundred Years’ War, following the fate of an English Longbowman who joins the British armies in Britany and fights at Crecy. The first book in that series is called Harlequin. The name refers to a “devil” figure from medieval plays but, in this case, is the antagonist of the novel. Harlequin is a mysterious knight, dressed all in black, who provokes the hero into joining the war.

When the book was released in America, it was deemed unwise to keep the name Harlequin, under which it was already being sold in England. Instead, it was called The Archer’s Tale, it being indeed a tale about an archer and the Chaucer-like title putting it into its medieval setting for unwitting readers. The original title, publishers worried, would bring to mind for Americans the Harlequin Romance novels and thus not attract the intended audience.

Whether or not one finds this scenario plausible, if one were to try to imagine a Harlequin-style romance novel about medieval warfare, one might come up with something close to The Scottish Chiefs.

The Scottish Chiefs is a historical novel, one of the earliest examples of that form, written by English author Jane Porter. In many ways it may remain the definitive, modern telling of the story of William Wallace (especially once you start poo-pooing Braveheart). Few facts are known about Wallace’s life beyond his victories (and defeats) in battle but speculation and embellishment upon those details form a critical piece of the Scottish identity.

Once again, this book has as much to do with the time in which it was written as opposed to the time about which it was written. The time saw Walter Scott and Robert Burns establishing a Scottish identity in literature and we see that going on in this work as well. It casts the “revolutionaries” of Scotland as heroic figures while portraying them, in many ways, in a modern context. For example, the phrase “Live Free or Die” is used, connecting the Scottish Independence war with the then-fairly-recent American Independence War. In fact, the Scottish Independence War has considerably less similarity to America’s political movement than contemporaries might liked to have imagined.

As to the story itself, once again I’m left wondering how much of the writing style is simply that of the time versus the quirks of this particular author. The publication of this book precedes The Fair God by several decades and in certain ways it is more single-dimensional than that work. A character, it seems, must be of the purest and sweetest virtue or consumed by vile, contemptible tyranny. No subtleties of character can be allowed to exist.

As to Wallace himself, each knight or earl that lays eyes upon him realizes his manliness and virtue and falls deeply in man-love with him, willing to follow him to the end. For the women, they immediately desire to possess him based on that initial vision, or even less. One woman seems intent on dedicated herself to Wallace, sight unseen.

The writing itself is modern enough in its use of vocabulary, but the structure is not. Sentences are extraordinarily flowery, with exclamatory adjectives and adverbs heaped on like so much rich gravy. At times it seems like an elevation of the prose to a form of poetry. At other times, it seems like someone who took Creative Writing 101 earnestly trying to add a unique set of words into each and every sentence.

As before, I’ll point out this was no obscure work. This was one of the most popular books in Europe when it was published (1809) and remains read in Scotland to this day. So the weakness in literary style cannot be passed off as the product of some unknown amateur. If I wanted to be truly scholarly, I compare the writing to a contemporary like Byron, but it is enough of a task to wade my way through this prose. The issue is not that the writing is so terrible as much as the florid descriptions slow down the pace of the actual story to something of a crawl. I am eager to see Wallace get at it in Stirling, but there are so many admirers to fawn over him between here and there.

One he finally arrives at Stirling, we find (as always, it seems), the author is fast and loose with the historical facts. The fight at Stirling Bridge is a side action to Wallace’s siege of Stirling Castle, similar to my Age of Kings training scenario. As a relief army arrives (under the historical commanders, but 4-5 times the strength), Wallace lays a clever trap, jury-rigging the bridge over the river Forth to be pulled down by some hidden soldiers. His opponent thus fooled, he manages to defeat an army nearly ten times his own strength, returning to complete the taking of Stirling castle later in the evening. It is quite a tale, and also quite unrelated to the actual battle.

In the end, it looks like I’m stuck with Braveheart and finding someone to play Hammer of the Scots with.

*In the same story, the designer explains that the simplified battle system was also created for cost savings. The original design of Quebec 1759 had ten different tactical areas, so different battles would each have a different feel. The decision to streamline battle resolution allowed the elimination of the extra boards, and reduced production cost for the games.

**As I pointed out, I recall playing a Stirling Bridge scenario with an actual bridge in Medieval: Total War, the original. The fight may have even started with the armies on opposite sides of that bridge, the typical “bridge battle” that features in many random maps. I did not try to reinstall that game on my current machine though. My memory suggests that this version of the battle may have also included the ford which the English didn’t use, but might have allowed their horse to outflank the Scottish attackers.

Despite my indignation, I gave The Borgias second season a little more time to develop. Although the start was inauspicious, it settled, by Episode 4, back into the style I appreciated from Season 1.

Episode 4 deals with the retreat of the French army from Naples and the Battle of Fornovo, where the Holy League – a combined force of Venice, Milan, Spain (King Ferdinand of Aragon was also King of Sicily), England, the Holy Roman Empire and, of course, the Pope – formed a army to prevent further French conquest in Italy.

True to the series, the historical events are duly mangled and replaced with the sexual conspiracies that were developed in earlier episodes. The Holy League is shown to have been formed to capitalize on the French retreat, rather than the reality that its formation was a proximate cause of that retreat. The involvement of the Spanish is completely neglected, removing this as the beginning of the wars between the HRE/Spain and France that will be fought in and over Italy for the next six decades.

Instead [don’t read further if you intend to watch], we see Cesare Borgia incensed over the sacking of a French convent by French scouts and determined to take revenge. He forms a motley band of villains and, having captured a few of the culprits, manages to tease out of them Charles’ secret hiding place for the French army’s gunpowder. Thus, the inability of the French to deploy their cannon at Fornovo is credited to, not the rain (although rain it does in the show), but to Cesare and his guerilla tactics.

Yes, it is still a bit silly, but it is a silly I can make peace with.

As before, I was impressed with the style of the armies as portrayed on screen. In particular, the Papal States army again has a combination Roman/Medieval style that, well almost certainly not accurate, portrays at a glance the disconnect between the mentality, at that snapshot in time, of the Italians towards warfare and the reality of the world advancing into modernity. I also really liked how much the actor captured the look of contemporary paintings of Condottiero Francesco II of Gonzaga.

Slitherine/Matrix, over the past few years, has been expanding their offerings. A company that once catered to the hardcore PC wargamer market now has releases in a number of other areas; they sell rulebooks for the table top version of Field of Glory; there is the occasional console offering; and, of course, many of their games have multi-platform releases for both tablet (IPad and Android) and PC.

One such game is HISTORY™ Great Battles Medieval. It was released in 2009, roughly simultaneously for PC, Android, iPad, XBox, and Playstation (3). The game is a Real Time Strategy offering set during the Hundred Years War. Think of it as a Medieval: Total War ultralight version. It was one of (and, as far as I know, the last* one of) several “History Channel” themed games developed by Slitherine in the late aughts.

The History Channel contribution includes cut-scene videos introducing the historical context of each battle. Cut scenes are a combination of footage from History Channel offerings and battle scenes created using the game’s graphics engine. Unfortunately, the TV show footage may or may not actually relate to the narration, such as this depiction the ships carrying the English force to Flanders, after having traveled back in time several centuries.

Some time ago, I picked up the “free” version for Android. This is essentially the playable demo for the full Android version, although it’s not necessarily marketed as such. The Android version (currently at $4.99), in turn, seems to be a subset of the PC version (currently at $19.99), which adds user-created scenarios and modding into the mix. Some of the reviewers on the Play Store seem a little miffed about the teaser nature of the free version. I, honestly, don’t remember what I was expecting when I got it. There was a long gap between when I installed it and when I first tried it out (waiting for some car repairs), and then another long stretch before I played it through until “the end.”

That end comes quickly. The game shows two historical campaigns: The Hundred Years war from first the English side and then the French. In addition, there is a “skirmishes” campaign, which I interpret as using the army building mechanic, but through random battles rather than historical battles. In the free version, only the English campaign for the Hundred Years War can be accessed and, within that, only the first two historical battles are playable.

After winning the battle at Cadsand, you can chose to “raid” villages. This allows you to build up the money necessary to upgrade your army before proceeding on to the next historical battle.

The game consists of a strategic level, where you as the player can customize your “army” and choose which battle to fight next. When a battle is selected, you move to a tactical layer where your armies are deployed against an enemy on a 3D terrain divided into a square grid. After a set-up phase, you begin giving movement orders to your units. Orders are given while the game is paused, but execution of those orders occurs in real time. Units engage enemy units within their range; one square for hand-to-hand weapons and multiple squares for archers. Engagement is automatic, and combat continues until the units, from one side or the other, break. Units will automatically change facing when, for example, moving into a flanking position on an enemy. In this way, multiple units can attack a single enemy, significantly increasing the odds of success. An additional level of player interaction is in the form of “cards,” which can be played to temporarily enhance the ability of a unit.

The units take both morale losses as well as physical losses. Leaders are also modeled, with the death of a captain dealing additional morale damage to a unit. Once a unit routes, it heads towards a friendly board edge, effectively removing itself from play for the rest of the battle – an exception being that a rally card can return a routed unit back into the fray. When all of the units from a side are routed, the other side wins the battle. If the player has won, he receives rewards in experience and money – which can be used to further upgrade units in the strategic interface.

As I think about it, the battles in this game bear a certain resemblance to the tactical battles in Birthright: The Gorgon’s Alliance. Birthright was released in 1997 has a hybrid strategy, tactical, and role-playing game based on the Dungeon and Dragons** world of the same name. The player assumed the role as a ruler of a kingdom and managed the business of that kingdom in a turn-based, grand-strategy game. That strategy layer had some very interesting detail to it. When nations went to war, the battles were fought on a tactical map with the player directing his armies. Finally, the world had various quests whereby the player and a few henchmen could go on a classic D&D dungeon crawl via a first-person, 3D action environment.

The game was released buggy, and a series of patches never brought the game up to fully-acceptable functioning. The grand-strategy portion was the closest the game came to getting it right, but that was only a part of the game. In fact, given its lineage, one might say that it should have been was the strategic icing on a Role Playing Game cake. That is, the pen and paper version of the Birthright setting was created to flesh out the role playing game, not the other way around. A computer port of just the strategic “side game” was not what the developers were after and may or may not have ever been acceptable to players.

The 3D dungeon crawl was likely its downfall. The game came out after the massive success of Doom and Doom II. That seemed the natural way to portray a Dungeons portion of a D&D game. The problem was that a 3D “mini game” portion of a Birthright was never going to be able to compete with a game designed soup-to-nuts to be a 3D, first-person dungeon crawl. My memory has Hexen as the state-of-the-art at the time, but that was already out a couple of years. Many of the big franchises had either just made the shift, or were making the shift to the Doom-like graphics. I, personally, could forgive the weakness in this part of the game and look at it as a merely a part of the whole. For sales, however, this obviously cut into the appeal.

The third portion, the tactical battles, was a key part of the concept. The player worked at the strategic level to manage the kingdom, zoomed down to command armies in battle, and then zoomed down further to fight monsters hand-to-hand. The battles were a continuous-time fight that had animated units meeting across a battlefield. The battlefield was divided into which was divided into a 5X3 square grid. The control of those armies was done through a smaller grid at the bottom of the screen where you would give commands by moving a block representing the armies from square to square. The corresponding units would then respond to your commands in the upper part of the screen, moving and fighting in full animated glory (circa 1997). The problem was, in playing the game, one had to focus on the lower portion of the screen. Concentrating on commanding the armies, using what looked like a tic-tac-toe board, meant there was not time to sit back and watch the units execute your commands. Thus much of this feature’s potential was lost simply through the way it had to be used.

I wander down this particular memory lane in part because I thought Birthright was going to be my ultimate game, mixing all the genres into one perfect world. Patches came out, seeming to get closer and closer to the promise of a working game. And then Sierra gave up. Part of me seems to just love the exercise of thinking back and wondering what might have been.

I also indulge myself now because Great Battle Medieval gets right what that game got so wrong twenty years ago. The battle itself is very similar to how they worked in Birthright. You command your units in a square grid, and the fights take place when units move into adjacent spaces. But the modern command interface is set right on top of the 3D animated display, making commanding much more intuitive. Even better, when you start giving commands to your units, the game automatically pauses. This means there is no chance of missing-out on viewing the lovely 3D battles because you are busy giving commands.

All of this suggests to me the place that this engine could usefully sit in the gaming pantheon. It would make a great, quick resolution for battles which come about in a detailed strategic level system.

But that is not what this game turns out to be. While it seems to aim for a Total War – lite, too much is “lite” and not enough remains. From Total War, it takes the 3D animations of the units moving and fighting, but does it serve a purpose with so much less under the hood than the Total War series? Total War already leaves one wanting when it comes to historical battle simulations, so what is left if you remove unit facing, formations, etc?

Having beefed up your army a bit through raiding, you can choose to fight the Battle of Morlaix.

If the Great Battle Medieval tactical level, relative to Medieval: Total War, has been has been watered down, the strategic level is really gutted. The idea is that your tactical results feed back into a strategic-level game and carry forward to the eventual victory or loss in the war. The problem is that there is very little strategy in the strategic level. Unlike the Total War concept where, unrealistic as it may be, there is a form of operational consideration to the strategic layer. Armies must be raised and placed, and the infrastructure to support them must be maintained. Great Battle Medieval, on the other hand, is rather more of your basic, casual-games inspired grind. You do choose an order to the battles that are fought, and victories in those battles earn you coin with which you can purchase upgrades or new units. You thus build your army over the course of the game, and work through the named historical battles. It’s a strategic level that owes more to Panzer General than Total War. It could be a nice wrapper over a great tactical package. But in this case, maybe it is all wrapper and no present.

Again, it might all be forgivable if the “History” part of the name were what shown through. If the historical battles themselves were, even if simplified, instructive about the units, weapons, and tactics deployed historically. The problem is that four units (the unit count for Cadsand) on a square grid just doesn’t immerse one into the history.

The Battle of Morlaix begins with an attack by two units of French knights on the English position. Once those are run off, you must defeat the remainder of the French army (in line to their rear). While this screenshot won’t blow anyone away, the graphics don’t look half bad (for a tablet) when zoomed in.

Some attempt is made to move in this direction. For example the second battle, which has you refight the Battle of Morlaix, scripts the battle so that it is split into two phases. The events of that day took place when a French force moved to relieve the the English siege of Morlaix in the fall of 1342. That battle has not been well documented but a key feature is that the French initially attacked the English positions with a division of knights. The results of the mounted charge were inconclusive, but it was enough to cause the English to withdraw from their lines into cover, allow the French army to lift the siege. In game, as the English player, you first must fight off the attack of a mounted force and, having defeated that, then route the remaining French forces.

While this adds some historical color, it doesn’t really lend any gravitas to the exercise. What can be done in scripting a battle (and I imagine the locked battles do even more along these lines) is counterbalanced by the fact that you have a user-managed and upgraded army that you are carrying from battle to battles. Between battles that, in actuality, had nothing to do with each other.

Whew. That was pretty harsh.

Perhaps I’m judging this game a little too rigorously. Instead of asking, does it somehow improve on Medieval: Total War, maybe I should be asking how it stands up as a Panzer General -lite with Hundred Years War chrome? Would it be something that would be fun to have on a tablet for a 5 or 10 minute distraction? Well, my answer is that the demo didn’t convince me it was worth the $4.99, as little as that is, to continue the journey. If the game were a little more about the tactics, and a little less about the grind (buying bonuses for your army), I might think otherwise. But from the demo, it just doesn’t seem like there is enough there.

Now, the (more expensive, I should add) PC version seems to offer extra features. How much more it contains above the tablet version I shouldn’t speculate on, as the only demo available is the Android version. I would guess the graphics would be tweaked to take advantage of a PC’s graphics cards. There are also scenario editing functions to allow for more battles beyond what comes with the campaigns.

It probably blows the financial model, but one feature that might move the attractiveness meter on a game like this is if the PC scenario editor could create games that could then be distributed to the tablet players.

Lets go break some heads

Field of Glory offers a more historically-plausible portrayal of the Battle of Cadsand. Like Tannenberg, it is a clash between quantity and quality. Unlike Tannenberg, it was hardly a contest.

The first battle in Great Battles Medieval, the Battle of Cadsand, is also available for me to play as it was modeled by a Field of Glory user.

It is not a battle that really belongs in a campaign system, as it had little to it in the way of strategic purpose.

The outbreak of hostilities in 1337 largely centered on the southwest of France on the disputed control over Gascony. British King Edward III, however, planned to defeat France by leaving Gascony to its own defenses and invading France from the north. His plans were stumbling, however, as he struggled both with raising the funds for the the English army and corralling his allies from the Low Countries into also supporting his campaign. By late fall, he decided that he needed a show of military prowess in order to bring all parties into line.

Sir Walter Manny was given command of a small portion of the army which Edward was assembling in England and was sent with it to invade the Flemish island of Cadsand. It was of little value, either militarily or economically, except that is was it was across a narrow channel from the port of Sluys, itself garrisoned by a substantial force. Instead of assaulting Sluys directly, Manny commenced a program of rape, pillage, and plunder all throughout the rural island. The force at Sluys was honor-bound to respond, and met the English force on ground of Manny’s choosing.

Surviving details of the battle are scant. We know that it was a decisive English victory and that the English force withdrew to England afterwards. The action did seem to have its desired effect, demonstrating as it did the capabilities of the English army.

A victory for England; one that is often credited to the English longbows. Likely this scenario gave the Flemish more troops than they actually brought to the fight.

There isn’t too much to say about the scenario itself. It is a decent example of what Field of Glory does with medieval actions. It is fairly well balanced but, given the lack of historical record, probably doesn’t provide much educational value as to the conditions in the actual battle. One feature I was impressed with in this one is the terrain. The small size and limited scope of the screenshot doesn’t quite do it justice, but the large “island” terrain surrounding the battlefield looks pretty nifty.

*Slitherine distributes a History:Legends of War for the PC, which seems to originally have been a Playstation title from an unaffiliated developer. It’s a turn based, 3D game of squad-level fighting in World War II.

**Yes, I know that what I’m referring to as D&D is really AD&D in every case. I don’t care.

The pope finds a giant cache of Roman porn in the woods. This brings a cross-dressing artist named Victor/Victoria into the Vatican, and she catches the Pope’s eye. Meanwhile, the King of France is recovering from “Neapolitan Disease” which, as we all know, is Syphilis, but in the show is a plague that wiped out much of the city in a matter of days. Finally, the Pope has a huge burning man (but, instead, he burns a Papal Bull) festival on the steps of the Vatican. A Ben Hur inspired horse-race highlights the daytime portion of the festival, while the night is consumed by a massive toga party, during which the Bull is burned.

Meanwhile, the college of Cardinals frets about the expense. Because there is nothing else wrong here.

There is suspension of disbelief, and then there is just f***ing with a fellow. I took a liking to The Borgias in Season 1, but if this is going to be Season 2, you may have to go it without me.

Netflix continues to pile on to feed the appetite for period drama with their latest in Renaissance intrigue, Medici: Masters of Florence.

I admittedly don’t have my finger on the pulse of the media-consuming public, but I am assuming this is largely Game of Thrones fan-out.

I, myself, jumped on the Song of Ice and Fire bandwagon a couple of years before the HBO series. At the time, I thought it was an older series (having heard about it “around” for some time), and was really shocked when I realized the books weren’t all written yet. It took took me a few chapters to acclimatize myself to the the slightly-altered language, but once I got past that, I took to the series with a vengeance. I recall thinking from about 3/4s into the first book, A Game of Thrones, that what the book got right was a detailed portrayal of everyday life, assuming that your life is that of the nobility.

The TV series, of course, boosted the popularity of the novel to an audience by at least an order of magnitude. Sales of the books themselves roughly quadrupled after the series was released, and the number of TV viewers is more than double that again. Add in rentals and DVD buyers, and you’ve got quite an audience. Certainly the words “the next Game of Thrones” within a pitch would ring nicely in the ears of studio executives.

My first impressions of the TV series were very good. Just based on a cold watching without revisiting the source material first, here seemed to be an extremely high-fidelity adaptation of the script relative to the book. I must say, though, going back and re-reading the book after watching the series was a bit surprising. It became very clear where the cuts were made for the video treatment. But even this left me with a positive impression. Quite a few of the cuts were focused on downsizing the scale to make the story doable on TV. For example,scenes that should have dozens of guards facing off would have a dozen or so total. Notably, Tyrion was knocked out early on in his first battle, avoiding the difficulty of portraying a massive battle scene on screen. I also thought the casting was dead-on, with one complaint. Everyone in the TV show is just too damn old.

The success of the series would seem to expose an appetite for fantasy, particularly in the adult markets. But the hunt for similar material also can exploit the historical themes to which A Song of Fire and Ice alludes. The story is clearly inspired by history, with the kingdoms of Westeros and beyond having historic counterparts, both obvious and not so. Any effort to map, one-to-one, the events of the stories to, say, the War of the Roses will surely fail as author Martin tends to mix and match and make up as needed. Nonetheless, similarities between Game of Thrones and the actual succession of Henry VIII are going to help sell a series dramatizing the latter.

Getting back to the subject of this particular article, the connection between Medici: Masters of Florence and A Game of Thrones is aided by the selection of Robb Stark to be Cosimo de’ Medici (although, watching, I didn’t pick up the connection – I had to look up the actor afterwards). In stark (heh heh) contrast to the casting in Game of Thrones, the actor playing the lead role is more than 10 years younger than the character he plays. Of course, part of the issue here is the story is told through a series of flashbacks, and Madden (that’s Robb’s real name – who knew?) must be, on the same viewing night, both a dozen years older as well as some 8-10 years younger than his real age.

The series’ story starts with the death of patriarch Giovanni de’ Medici, and we follow forward with his sons’ reactions and struggles after their father’s death.

Oddly enough, the actor playing Cosimo’s brother looks considerably older than Madden. So much so, I was confused through the first several episodes – wondering why father Giovanni seemed to be grooming his younger son to take over the family business. As I write this, actor Stuart Martin (a Red Shirt from Game of Thrones – he played a nameless Lanister soldier) does not have his birth date recorded on line, so I can’t really comment on the relative actors’ ages.

Anyway, as the son’s struggle with their father’s death which, in a bit of highly speculative fiction, is something of a murder mystery, the groundwork is laid showing formative events between a young Cosimo at the time when his father was actively building the family’s wealth. A bit of gray-colored hair and a dose of gravitas are there to remind us that the actors have aged 20 years from one scene to the next.

To make matters even more difficult, both the 59 year old Giovanni and the 79 year old Giovanni are played by the same 80 year old Dustin Hoffman, and no amount of makeup can really help him bridge the gap to the former. Hoffman doesn’t really even try. Basically, if he is alive and talking, he must be closer to 60 than he is to 80.

While I’m on a roll, I’ll also say that I failed to recognize actor Anthony Howell (playing condottieri Francesco Sforza) whom I watched in the supporting role throughout the series Foyle’s War. I also failed to make the connection that Cosimo’s father-in-law was portrayed by GoT‘s Walter Frey. These oversights are considerably more understandable than missing Robb Stark/Cosimo, who on screen are essentially the same character.

The brooding young son has the weight of the world thrust upon his shoulders when his father dies, leaving him the keys to the kingdom. Despite all the brooding, he seems to make a success of himself in his new leadership role, although whatever greatness he displays is largely done off-screen. On screen he broods. Until he meets a woman who, while able to lift his spirits somewhat, can never fit into the grand scheme of things as King of the North(ern Italy’s Banking Empire). So, while he broods for a little less, he still must brood.

Then everyone dies.

OK. So it is not really that bad. In fact, my suspicion is that it is the popularity of The Borgias that was the immediate inspiration for this series. Take the same time period. Put a towering icon of the big screen in as the patriarch and fill in the family with younger, non-American actors. Success.

Medici doesn’t have quite the ambition of The Borgias, and therefore a few of the things I really enjoyed about the latter, I’m not going to find in the former. The lavish weddings, the (relatively) large scale battles; these things fit less into a tale of bankers than they do of popes and kings. I note that, even in The Borgias, the scenes where deals are negotiated with Florence aren’t particularly lavish. Of course, a big part of it is likely due the big difference in production costs between the two shows.

Beyond that, Medici, seems to go considerably further afield when it comes to creating fictional narrative to fill in the blanks of what is sometimes a rather sparse historical narrative. This is not, by any means, an analysis. It’s more of an impression. Neither show is meant to be a documentary, and both take opportunities to spice up the series for their viewing audiences. The Borgias just give me the impression that the spirit of the historical tale is adhered to more than Medici.

In the end, Medici is decently* entertaining as a television series. However, they seem to have left much potential on the table. Cosimo de’ Medici, assuming you do subscribe to this interpretation, reshaped the history of the world. While much of that influence was based upon his ability to spend money, whether on political influence or great works, there should be a more interesting side of the story when portraying the actual people. The ability to spend money depends on the ability to make even more money, and the scale to which Cosimo was able to profit from European trade suggests a man of great charisma, intelligence, and capabilities. In Medici‘s portrayals, we see virtually none of this, either from Madden’s Cosimo or Hoffman’s Giovanni. The occasional political intrigue aside, the wealth just seems to roll in on its own. The series can stand without it, but I think it missed an opportunity to put real personalities behind the historical figures.

*Like The Borgias, Medici seems to be spicing up the show with some gratuitous rock-n-roll per the HBO formula. Granted the sexual politics are part of the story – the arranged marriage of Cosimo and his illegitimate son from his relationship with a slave. But once again, the show goes beyond mere speculation into fantasy. Cosimo’s younger brother Lorenzo is portrayed as a perpetual bachelor, with titillating affairs spicing up the narrative and lending a little on-screen nooky. And yet, this is the Lorenzo who was married somewhere in the flashback portion of the show, inspiring the treatise on the importance of marriage to the health of the nation, De Re Uxoria.

I downloaded a Campaign, in this case being a trio of battles from the First and Second Italian Wars. It is entitled Furia Francese and covers the same battle played through earlier. These are user-designed battles intended to improve upon the representation in the stock game (or in the case of Cerignola, an earlier user-made version). The scenarios have no ranged weapons and very restricted (as the author describes them cut-to-the-chase) setups.

Unit movement is greatly restricted in a combination of seeking more realistic movement and counter as well as modifying the units to include command and control considerations. The set-up puts units pretty much in contact, and further restricts movement to funnel units into the historically-correct attacks.

The dark rectangles are impassible terrain, representing either literally impassible terrain (e.g. hills) or perhaps just command issues. Very minimalistic. But there are rain effects!

Looking at the above screenshot, from the Battle of Fornovo illustrates a few points. The units are restricted from crossing to ahistorical parts of the battle by the dark gray rectangles (impassible terrain). Movement is further restricted by very low movement allowances on each unit plus, in some cases, further restricted terrain. In the upper-left corner of the screen, the small blue units are immovable. They exist, apparently, to delay the combat between the larger pike units on both sides. Note also the baggage train. After pushing aside some French resistance, the AI is going to go after those baggage units. This simulates the feature of the battle where victorious Italian cavalry was essentially taken out of the fight while they looted the baggage train.

With little choice in movement, there isn’t much strategy. It becomes a game of waiting to see which die rolling will prevail. Each wing is like like a timer with random properties, and if X breaks before Y the player will win, if Y before X the computer. Furthermore, the outcome of the matchups rarely seems to be in question. Most fights are fairly one-sided, the only question being one of timing. The scenario designer also uses a trick common to Field of Glory user scenarios, inserting unusable and unreachable units in to game the engine. Jarringly, they are picked for there stats and no other reason so, the Italians might find themselves with some Ottoman infantry on their side.

From a scenario design perspective, there is some merit in this approach. The game engine is forced to execute the battle according to reality. From a gameplay perspective, however, this is a way of taking away everything that is fun from the game a leaving only what is not.

Court Intrigue

The quote at the beginning is a line delivered by a fictional King Charles VIII. He is foreshadowing what we all know will happen when France invades Italy. It will bring destruction and terror, even to some of those who helped engineer the invasion. Was Charles actually so circumspect?

That story, as told by The Borgias, has advanced to a point where the narrative in the show matches the games I’ve been playing and the battles that I am reading about. I’ve finished with the first season, which ends with Charles’ capture of Naples. It really makes a great counterpoint for my gaming.

Obviously, a detailed drama has got to make much of the detail up out of whole cloth. The historical record is nowhere near complete enough to recreate accurate interpersonal interactions in the public sphere, much less recreate what may have gone on in private. Naturally, when one is creating a story to suit the needs of its telling, it becomes easy to stray away from even the known facts into more appealing fiction. It probably grates on some to see history bent to serve the ratings. I’m fine with enjoying the show while not taking anything on face value.

Another writing detail that may bother some is the mixing of the modern with the historical. Obviously, we need the characters speaking 21st century English, not 14th century Italian, just so we can follow along. But how far is too far? I suspect that the music used is sometimes way ahead of the times, while at other times closer. I suspect similar mixed-performance in costume, sets and, especially, the behavior. However this, done right, can (in my mind) improve a performance. The sensibilities of 500+ years ago, played accurately, would often be foreign to us, where as “translating” them to a more modern situation helps immerse the modern viewer in the situation.

The scene of the (first) wedding of Lucrezia is a case in point. The scenery is very impressive and I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t too far of the historical. The wedding music is probably close enough to historically accurate, but it has some modernity hidden within. Dance club for the 1490s. The dance is similar. It is a formal dance (again, benefit of the doubt) suitable to the period but it is infused with modern flirtatiousness. As I said, I personally find this mix compelling.

A friend was reading a biography of the reformation period and was struck by the similarities between modern “social media” and the methods used to communicate the religious/political ideas of the day. The new technology of the printing press and armies of zealous students were a potent vector for change, and one that has remarkable parallels to today. I was reminded of this when The Borgias presented the 15th century version of Tinder. As various houses present suitors for the children of the Pope, they send a delegation to talk up the proposition and then unveil a portrait. The Pope e famiglia are then left to swipe left or right at their leisure. Accurate? I have no idea, but it all reminds us that people have always been people, even five centuries ago. Framed in the right way, the events of the past can have remarkable parallels to the present and this has been the kind of drama to do it.

My other favorite bit in this show has been the armor. In particular, I love the armor of Giovanni Borgia, Gonfalonier and Captain General of the Papal armed forces. It is a mix between late medieval, Renaissance, and Roman Empire. I am not aware of any contemporary depiction that would support such a style. It’s just a cool (and probably a modern) idea.

The depiction of the armies overall is well done, particularly for a TV series. There are no battles depicted, which is accurate. Except for a couple of lootings, there wasn’t much in the way of fighting during the invasion. But the armies arrayed have a nice combination of period costumes and CGI to portray both the detail and the vastness of the French forces.